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Monday, July 15, 2013

Docs Issue 1

PO Box 26183
Baltimore, MD
21210
USA

I'll admit, I wasn't really sure what I was reading until I got to the final page of this zine and read the guidelines for people who want to submit to future issues. So what is Docs? Well, it's brief three topic/page biographies of people: living, dead, or entirely fictional.

And by "biography" I'm speaking pretty loosely, there are pictures, and sheet music, and weird stories, and to be honest I really didn't have any idea what I was reading the first time through. Where these true? They didn't really seem to be...

But then I hit the final "biography" in here (Hrtumt Slitte by F. L. Smith), and even if it still confused me to some extent, it read like the sort of collection of ephemera that I love and I didn't really care that I didn't really "get" the rest of the zine". Each page of Hrtumt Slitte is clearly part of a larger piece that does not exist. The table of contents (with footnote) seems to have no relation to the other pages. The first page is a description of Kid Kinney ("a loathsome creature") from someone who hates him. The second page is a series of TV show proposals that all finish with everything unraveling. But the final page was what clinched it for me. A description of someone exploring an abandoned building that features a hidden message amongst the text _and_ stops midway through a sentence with no resolution? That sounds like something that I'd write! (No wonder nobody reviews my zines...)

I'm not sure what the next issue of Docs will contain, but I hope it has more content like that final biography.

I only include website, email, and PO Box addresses. I'm not comfortable printing what could be people's home addresses on the internet. If you want your address included with the review of your zine let me know.